


Conspiracy By Default

by themadlurker



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-13
Updated: 2011-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-14 18:10:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themadlurker/pseuds/themadlurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can't Sherlock go <em>one week</em> without getting himself arrested?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conspiracy By Default

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magog_83](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magog_83/gifts).



> Thank you to [vensre](http://vensre.livejournal.com/profile) for the beta.

Lestrade made it about two steps into the Yard before Sergeant Donovan was marching up to him with a fiercely annoyed look on her face.

"Oh god, what is it this time?" Lestrade asked, scrubbing a hand across his eyes as if that could prepare him for this at all. He hadn't actually been called in early this morning, so it couldn't be an emergency, or anything official, which left only one reason for that look on Donovan's face. "What's he done?"

"Hasn't gone on a killing spree, yet, if that's what you mean," Donovan said. She was obviously making a concerted effort not to grimace. "Got picked up last night in a drugs bust. The _idiot_ was trying to score a hit in Leicester Square. When our lot turned up he just beamed at them and said, 'Oh, brilliant,' as if he hadn't a care in the world. He's in interview three now, still sleeping it off as far as I know."

"I thought I told you to call me if this happened again," Lestrade said, already veering off in a new direction that would take him to the interview room. "Anyone from MI6 shown up yet?"

"Not so far," Donovan replied, not even bothering to hide her grimace this time. "If any men with umbrellas turn up with paperwork for his release I'll send them straight on to you, shall I?"

Lestrade sighed heavily. "Send them to my office. I'd like a word or two with our repeat offender before we turn him over this time."

Donovan nodded and said tersely, "Rather you than me," before she went back to her desk and less frustrating problems, like police work.

Lestrade stopped outside the interview room and groaned loudly, just to get it out of his system. Then he stepped inside.

Sherlock's head snapped up and his eyes fastened on Lestrade hungrily. "Divorce still going badly, Inspector?" The boredom in his tone was at odds with the the intensity of his gaze as it swept over Lestrade. "You should find a different hotel, at least. Surely you can afford something better than the Apollo?"

"Should I even bother to ask how you know which hotel I'm staying at?" Lestrade asked wearily.

"Please," Sherlock sniffed and said derisively, "nowhere else in London breeds that particular strain of mould and with such virulence. Your own nose should tell you that, even if no one else has seen fit to mention it yet."

Lestrade sighed and rubbed at the (admittedly patchy) stubble on his chin. Yesterday he'd cut himself repeatedly trying to shave in the grubby hotel mirror and today he hadn't even bothered to try. He probably was giving off plenty of clues about the state of his marriage, at that.

"I take it no one from Her Majesty's Secret Service has appeared to demand my release yet, since you're just standing there gawping," Sherlock said testily.

"Your brother is not actually a get-out-of-jail-free card, you do realize that, don't you?" Lestrade said without much hope of its making an impression. They'd been through this conversation far too many times already. He pulled a rickety, overworked chair up to the table and sat down opposite Sherlock, just to drive home the point that he wasn't in any hurry to let the man go, brother or no brother.

"Of course not," Sherlock snapped, "Mycroft doesn't carry calling cards, he's much too _important_ for that." He sneered over the word as if it had offended him personally.

"I meant not a calling card oh, never mind," said Lestrade. It was anyone's guess whether a given reference would sink into Sherlock's brain. He knew the oddest, most trivial things always provided they had been somehow involved in a previous case, or had some arcane bearing on his "science of deduction". Types of mould spores found in cheap Bayswater hotels, for example, seemed to fall within the relevant category.

"Why have you bothered to come see me then?" Sherlock said crossly. "Hadn't you better wait until the lord and master of the British Commonwealth gives you your instructions?" He huffed and drew himself up into a defensive ball, even though this required compressing his long frame into one of the cramped interview room chairs.

That was good. If Sherlock was sulking, then Lestrade _deduced_ that the drugs bust had gone down before he'd managed to do anything too stupid this time. So Lestrade's efforts to keep him clean hadn't been entirely scuppered in one night.

"I don't know what makes you think everyone is one of your brother's pack of hounds," Lestrade said slowly, "but I'm nobody's dog and I don't jump at command."

Sherlock gave him a very skeptical eyebrow. "Really, Inspector? Are you going to pretend it's coincidence that I find myself sitting across from you again, when we both know perfectly well that you have several times interfered with other jurisdictions in order to ensure that all my interactions with the London Metropolitan Police pass through your office? Don't think me ungrateful, please, it has afforded me an excellent opportunity to study the efficacy of police intervention in various criminal matters."

Lestrade stared at him in shock. "Do you mean to tell me that all these arrests, getting yourself hauled in here with the drug addicts and the pushers that this has all been part of one of your damned _experiments_? What would you have done if we didn't scoop you up? Do you really fancy a go-round with some of the junkies we get, high as kites or out of their minds on speed, just because someone on the beat misses the note on your file and drops you in with the rest?"

A triumphant smirk curled its way across Sherlock's lips and Lestrade realized too late what he'd just admitted.

"I don't have you dragged in here for my health, you know," he added somewhat testily.

"No, indeed, I'm sure your career benefits enormously from your little... arrangement with my brother." Sherlock was still smirking, although it had lost some of its triumph and looked almost melancholy now. "I assure you I'm quite used to these tidy convenient circumstances occurring around me; I assume that was why you allowed me to assist on your cases in the first place."

Lestrade, initially annoyed by Sherlock's insistence on his wrong-footed interpretation of events, took that statement and turned it around to look at it from several angles. There was something illogical there, and to find it Lestrade had to remind himself that Sherlock, while very clever at dates and times and the origin of mould spores, usually managed to miss some detail or other on a case, and it was always the human element. He was used to people taking an interest in him because of his brother, and so he assumed that Lestrade could only be interested in him for that reason. It was a hell of a logical fallacy, and the missing step Sherlock had skipped right over said an awful lot about the way his mind worked.

"You think the only reason someone would put up with you or help you is because your brother had bribed them?" Lestrade asked slowly, wanting to be sure he'd got this right.

"Obviously," said Sherlock, in a straightforward, offhand manner that made Lestrade want to wince.

Lestrade forced himself to take a deep breath and wondered how he was supposed to get through to a logical mind seized of an illogical idea.

"I admit it would be nice if there were some sort of compensation for the amount of overtime I put into keeping you out of trouble," Lestrade admitted. It was nothing he hadn't said half a dozen times to his fellow officers although, it occurred to him now, not in front of Sherlock himself. That would have been _rude_ , after all. Only, because Sherlock made the world go topsy-turvy, perhaps rude would have been a kindness.

"Like I say, it would be _nice_ ," Lestrade continued carefully, "but since I didn't know you had a brother, never mind that he was a creepy, shadowy government figure, until _after_ he interrogated me on why I was letting you get mixed up in police business, I suppose he didn't think it was worth bribing me to do what I was already doing."

Lestrade had the pleasure of seeing Sherlock, for the first time in their acquaintance, look completely nonplussed.

"You have allowed me access to your cases without ulterior motivation?" Sherlock asked in genuine surprise. It was a good look on him, Lestrade thought.

Lestrade privately examined the implications of answering "yes" to that question and settled on saying, "I thought catching dangerous murderers was enough of an incentive," instead.

"Aha. Your fellow officers did not seem to find that sufficient," Sherlock said with a bitterly ironic curl to his lip. "They find me unsettling."

Lestrade snorted. "Unsettling" was something of an understatement. Donovan had asked for his personal assurance that she would never have to be alone in a room with Sherlock before she would agree to work with him at all and she was one of the ones who had warmed to him.

"Guess it's lucky for you I'm not easily unsettled then," he said.

Sherlock blinked at him once, long and considering. "Indeed, Inspector."

There was a knock at the door and Donovan popped her head in, carefully avoiding looking at Sherlock.

"The people you were expecting are in your office," she informed Lestrade shortly, and vanished.

Lestrade nodded at Sherlock and went to hold the door open pointedly. "Go on, you might as well practise your evasion tactics while I'm filling out the paperwork. I figure three, four government agents to slip past, tops. You'll probably be out of here before I am, at this rate."

Lestrade walked out of the interview room without a backwards glance, but he thought he heard something catch and hold the door before it could snick shut, and he wouldn't have been at all surprised to see someone slipping out of the area without being properly discharged.

He took a detour past the coffee machine on the way to his office. One Holmes was enough to take without caffeination in the morning; two would be unbearable.

Maybe, if he was lucky, he might even get to do some police work later today.


End file.
